It is the most widely adopted language in Eurasia. Chinese beats out Russian with the sheer numbers of speakers it has. But Russia has the widest geographical reach. Russian is such an important language that during the Space Race, learning the language became part of Astronaut training. This is still true today as Russian is a language of the International Space Station.

Starts with A

Russian does not have a lot of words that start with “A.” It’s been almost a rule going back to early times. Most native Russian words don’t start with A. There are a few exceptions like “alphabet” and “perhaps.” But other than that, if you see a Russian word that starts with “A,” the chances are that it’s a foreign word imported into the language.